Let’s Talk About Slice of Life Anime

Let’s talk about slice of life anime. Yes, that slice of life. The one allegedly responsible for the fiery death of the anime industry a few years back. It’s no secret that a lot of anime fans don’t really care for slice of life shows. Heck, some would go so far as to say it’s a genuine threat to Good Creators and their ability to make Good Anime. But what if I actually like these shows? This led me to think more about the reasons why I watch slice of life things, and after some soul searching I realised that I still like my cute stuff. A lot of these shows are a hard sell to anyone who hasn’t already sold their soul to the moe gods, but maybe just maybe there’s something to appreciate.

The typical slice of life series is the 4-koma manga adaptation. 4-koma manga usually involves a series of four small comic panels that lead into a quick gag. The scene is set, the foundation is built, the punchline is delivered and the outcome ties everything together. This is the popular format for slice of life manga, and tends to be good at carrying stories with cozy lighthearted tones. One of the earlier high school slice of lifes to come out of this format was Azumanga Daioh. Azumanga Daioh like many of these works is about a group of teenage girls and their quirky but mundane everyday life. Azumanga Daioh‘s punchlines are simple, which is totally okay for what it is, but sometimes the jokes are so straight that adapting them into animation takes away their foundation. There’s a lot more to account for when you add in colour and animation and sound, and trying to build natural scene pacing within those structures often works against the rapid delivery that these gags often demand. The Azumanga Daioh anime, while mostly a solid adaptation, has issues with leaving the bones of the 4-koma format bare.

In episode seven lover of all cute things Sakaki meets Chiyo’s dog Mr. Tadakichi. What follows is a sequence where Sakaki becomes so infatuated petting him that Chiyo has to intervene. It’s still quite funny, but it doesn’t pack the same punch as the source material. Whereas the manga only dedicates all of the few seconds it would take to read this one little comic strip the anime expands the punchline to around a minute. This isn’t to discredit long uncomfortable silences as their own source of humour, but it doesn’t really mesh with this joke’s thin amount of content. It’s chuckle-worthy and cute and all, but there’s not a whole lot to the execution. Despite all that, these works continue to be appealing for their simple silly cuteness. I sometimes consider myself one such fan, but it’s still a tricky sell.

So why am I saying that there’s secretly something more to this? Well, because Kyoto Animation. Not only can KyoAni take credit for popularising this genre but they could also pretty fairly claim to be the masters of it. You might think that’s a pretty dramatic take, but god damn it’s one I’m willing to own. And I’m not the only one. I’ve sampled other slice of life shows with friends who aren’t as into anime as me and the response is usually disinterest and ridicule, but as soon as I break out K-ON! the mood changes. I asked one friend why and they said “because stuff actually happens”. That might be a surprise to anime fans who’ve made it the butt of a years long slew of It’s A Show About Nothing jokes, but the craft and density of K-ON! resonates with people. And we can thank director Naoko Yamada for that. Where a whole lot of directors fumble in adaptation Yamada shines, taking even mundane works and giving them a sense of presence that can only come out through animation. Yamada doesn’t just adapt gags, she fills the spaces in between them.

Slice of life isn’t just cute girls being silly though. Everyday life has a lot of stories to tell after all, and KyoAni can probably tell all of them. Although they tend to fixate on stories about the lives of high schoolers they’ve managed to get a ton of mileage and genre variants from that. The screwball comedy of Nichijou; the mundane mysteries of Hyouka; the goofy but warm romantic comedy of Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions; the intimate ensemble drama of Sound! Euphonium. Each a different slice of life.

But maybe you’re bored with all these anime about teenagers, maybe you’re an adult who wants something you can actually relate to. Then allow me to suggest Shirobako. Shirobako is probably the ultimate slice of life about how being an adult sucks, but also about how we do our best anyway (and a whole bunch of other things I’ll totally get into). It begins with our main characters as high schoolers, glowing with optimism and working their way towards their dream jobs in the anime industry. Cut to several years later when they start to get their foot in the door, and it turns out their dream job isn’t quite as magical as it seems. Their dream job is still a job, filled with seemingly impossible deadlines and unreliable collaborators and tons of sleepless nights.

Shirobako doesn’t hold back on the sentiment that sometimes your dreams aren’t quite what they seemed. It doesn’t glamorise or dramatise working in the anime industry or adult life. It depicts them sincerely and sometimes in painful detail. Life isn’t totally miserable though. Shirobako recognizes that, and it balances its blunt reflections with a charming cast of characters and a good-natured sense of humor. While Shirobako doesn’t create the kind of moment to moment character resonance of KyoAni’s best triumphs it does present something that KyoAni probably never will: an honest down to earth slice of life story about adults. Adult slice of life is relatively sparse territory for anime but there are still plenty that exist (just this year we’ve been gifted Sakura Quest and Recovery of an MMO Junkie). After all this genre offers as many possibilities as life itself, and then some.

Maybe what you look for in anime are action and thrills, or bold weirdness, or a whole range of other things that might do a lot more for you than these relatively mundane tales about regular life. I appreciate anime for those things as well. But hopefully I’ve shed some light on why others enjoy slice of life anime. An anime can be special to someone in one way or a million, and it’s worth sharing all of them.

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6 thoughts on “Let’s Talk About Slice of Life Anime”

Amazing article! Slice of life is my favorite genre of anime. I started watching KyoAni’s work recently after enjoying Chuunibyou much more than I thought I would. I finished K-ON last week and it also exceeded every expectations I had. The music, the characters, the “feel good” vibes… But what fascinated me the most in K-ON was what you thoroughly analyzed here – the direction. Yamada’s direction is so sensible and full of subtlety, it does an incredible job in showing how human the characters are with impecable environment and body language framing.

I’ll start 2018 watching Euphonium and I have this feeling it’s going to become one of my favorite anime. From all I’ve read and saw, it seems to be such a beautiful piece of audiovisual work, both visually and thematically. I’m sure I’ll be moved and inspired by it.

Not sure if you heard about the World Masterpiece Theater, a collection of anime adaptations of classic western literature, some of which are extremely special and inspiring to me. For me they’re the best example of slice of life anime, as they follow the characters living their daily lives with no action at all. They’re very realistic, emotional and relatable, most of the hardships the characters go through can really be felt by us, even though the main characters are children.

Thanks a lot!! I appreciate getting comments like these. KyoAni are seriously great and deserve to have their craft recognised, especially Naoko Yamada. If you haven’t seen them Yamada also directed the absolutely brilliant A Silent Voice as well as Tamako Market and its incredible film sequel Tamako Love Story. She was also the biggest driving force behind Euphonium’s first season even though she wasn’t the director.

And yes I’ve heard a lot of awesome things about World Masterpiece Theatre. No idea when I’ll get to those works but there definitely something I’ll ebentually get on top of.

I am glad I found someone give a good definition of slice of life in terms of anime. Along with the classical explanation, slice of life’s tend to have no plot or real ‘direction’. Seinfeld is a good example of non Animation slice of life.

I bring up definitions because far too many anime fans call shows slices of life when they are most definitely NOT slices of life. It’s become a thing that if people are in high school or the anime is a drama or romance, it’s blanket labeled a slice of life. It’s annoying to have to always argue with anime fans or friends about a show that isn’t about superheroes or fantasy (and even then they can still be a slice of ‘life’). My current favorite past time is to label My Hero Academia a slice of life because it has no really plot and it’s abit sxhool life’s day to day activities, but as a super hero. By many fans definition and how anime’s are just labeled slice of life, MHA is a slice of life. Point being that I wish people would treat anime like movies and TV, and rightfully label things drama, historical, romance, fantasy, sci fi, etc or some combination of the above. And call 4-panel manga adaptations with no plot slices of life, as is proper.

As a side note, I don’t consider Shirobako a slice of life, as it has a story and plot, of teenagers dreaming, going to college, and working as adults, going through various phases of life. It has a plot, story, and strong themes about life, something slices of life don’t have by definition.